Research In Motion (RIM) is adding a selection of mobile services from Internet portal Yahoo to the popular BlackBerry handheld, including search, e-mail, and instant-messaging capabilities, and will start rolling out the service in 60 countries in about two weeks, the two companies said in a statement.
The deal greatly expands RIM’s relationship with Yahoo, the operator of one of the Web’s most-visited sites. Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM is seeking to widen its sales to include everyday consumers and enhance services to its existing, mostly corporate, base.
Our job is to create a rich user experience for our community so that they want to use Yahoo on it, and hopefully we create such a rich experience for the Yahoo community that they want to buy a BlackBerry and run Yahoo on it, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said in an interview with Reuters.
Yahoo Go for Mobile will bring to the BlackBerry platform one-click access to Yahoo’s community, information, and content services. BlackBerry users also will get real-time delivery of e-mail messages sent to Yahoo Mail accounts and improved wireless synchronization of sent and deleted items, Yahoo spokesperson Helena Maus said.
Later this year, new BlackBerries will include icons that will give users of the mobile device single-click access to Yahoo services from the Blackberry’s main screen, Maus said. Current BlackBerry users will be able to download the services in a couple of weeks.
Yahoo customers eventually will be able to import and synchronize their address books and calendar entries using the BlackBerry. With Yahoo Messenger, BlackBerry users will be able to access and manage their friends list, see which friends are online, send and receive text messages, and participate in online conferences.
The two companies, who already offer a limited Yahoo service, did not say how much the deal is worth, but Marco Boerries, senior vice-president of Yahoo Connected Life, described it as "significant".
The BlackBerry leads the global market for data-centric handheld computers, accounting for 21.4 percent of the nearly 15 million units shipped last year, according to Gartner Inc.
The numbers, however, do not include the 858,000 BlackBerry smart-phones shipped last year. Those voice-centric devices are part of an emerging cell-phone market where RIM competes with Palm Inc. Treo and mobile phones running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile platform.
We have 200 million mail users worldwide, and we are using that user base of Yahoo to connect them to the premier device today," Boerries told Reuters.
Communications Key
"This is killer," Boerries said. "The cool thing about this is that in the same way we now seamlessly connect personal communications, your personal address book to the BlackBerry, we also connect personal information you are already using on Yahoo, like sports, news or weather."
We are providing a seamless experience for those with BlackBerrys by bridging the divide between Internet services and mobile devices, said Maus. "By combining Yahoo’s services with the compelling BlackBerry platform, we are giving consumers a powerful mobile Internet experience."
Maus also said the new BlackBerry offerings are being rolled out in more than 60 countries around the world by carriers including Sprint Nextel, Rogers Wireless in Canada, and O2 in the UK.
The communications services are the key, she added, noting that Yahoo has some 200 million e-mail users worldwide and hopes to leverage that user base to connect them to a leading enterprise tool.
Mobile Strategy
The deal adds to Yahoo’s ongoing program to extend its services beyond the personal computer to mobile customers and into homes.
Extending further into the mobile realm is a priority for Yahoo, said Maus, and that involves partnerships with RIM and others who offer services to a variety of devices.
Yahoo in January unveiled Yahoo Go with support from corporate partners such as Motorola, Intel, and Nokia. Yahoo Go Mobile launched with AT&T and Cingular Wireless in some U.S. Markets and 10 countries in Europe and Asia.
For its part, RIM already has added to the BlackBerry both the Google Talk instant-messaging application and the Google Local service that provides access to maps and satellite imagery, information about local businesses, and driving directions.
The Upturn
The BlackBerry’s success stems from its popularity among business professionals as an email device. The gadget also has been adopted as a standard for many IT departments. To expand its customer base, RIM is targeting the high-end of the smart-phone market comprised of people who want data-centric services like email along with voice communications.
The Yahoo deal is a reflection of that direction, but is not expected to have a major impact.
"It is nice-to-have feature," David Kerr, analyst for Strategy Analytics said. "Yahoo is what some users might want, but it is not a homerun feature." Within the smart-phone market, the BlackBerry’s weakness is not in services, but in the fact that it is more difficult to use than the other platforms, Kerr said.
The learning curve for the BlackBerry is hard, compared to the Treo and a Windows Mobile device, he said.
The California-based company announced a similar deal with wireless phone maker Motorola last year, and is working on others with U.S. phone partners AT&T Inc. and Cingular Wireless.